The Artist is a film that reminds audiences of the beauty of silent films, and the pure innocence and joy of watching pantomime. Jean Dujardin portrays a silent film star who transcends the auditory realm through his acting. He is dropped as soon as sound comes into the picture because withe fresh new technology comes fresh new acting talent. Dujardin's portrayal of George Valentin, an artist struggling to reclaim the medium he once used to project his soul, is a heart warming and earth shattering accomplishment. Peppy Miller, played by Berenice Bejo, is the perfect representation of the sound era. She's beautiful, bright, and sympathetic to what the old silent films contributed to the art of film, yet she temporarily forgets about George when her stardom takes off.
This film can be appreciated by all audiences alike, yet, due to it's silent film appeal, cinephiles, film historians, and the older generation of movie goers will appreciate it all the more. The film is essentially a silent film, yet it uses sound in a jarring and conciliatory way. The film eventually uses sound, so to call it a silent film would be incorrect. It's more of an homage to the silent film era and it reconciles the medium's tendency to adopt new technological innovations at the cost of artistry.
The aesthetic beauty in this film was perfect. Even the aspect ratio of the film was that of a silent film. No widescreen here. There is much to the self reflexivity in the film itself and in the self destruction that Valentin puts himself and his work through. George watches himself behind the screen at the premiere of his latest film, he creates his own film, writes, directs, and acts in it, and he also meticulously browses his collection of his films. His life and work are what destroy him. He has given so much to the screen visually. Muteness in expression is the only way he can work. Even his faithful companion dog is an accomplice in the silent film star's gimmicky endeavors. When this muteness is analyzed, it becomes a self destructive love affair between George and his films, all the while sound and Peppy gain all the glory. The two clearly belong together, just as their representations of sound and movement also belong together, in perfect cinematic matrimony.
It's that time of year once again. I again will only be experiencing the festival from an isolated and chilled apartment in Michigan, but I no doubt will try to watch some of the films online. Here are a few films I am excited to hear about. If I could be there myself, these would be my top movies to see.
The Perception of Moving Targets
I love when films embrace the medium's true nature, to show the movement of figures through time. This film, in an experimental fashion, is divided into four chapters, each with it's own distinct characters. The aural and visual nature of film is interrogated and pushed to reveal answers to how people instinctively make meaning with a medium that is strictly movement and sound. Filmic nature's frontier is explored in this film and I love any director who attempts to explore the mysterious yet known expanses of film.
2 Days in New York
I love comedies and this one sounds like a perfect formula for laughs. Chris Rock plays Mingus, the husband of Marion in New York with their 2 mulatto children and their cat. Marion's Santa-like father, her sister and her sister's crazed boyfriend drop in randomly and test Mingus and Marion's relationship. Chris Rock's hipster New York swag fills me with joy. He is the perfect candidate for such a role and his humor bound with the vintage outlook of this hipster middle class New Yorker mindset will be one to thouroughly enjoy.
California Solo
The story begins with a washed up musician from an old 90s rock band confronted with deportation due to his Scottish status and previous drug offenses. He is arrested for a DUI and the only way for him to remain in his home is for him to prove to the bureaucrats that he will cause great emotional turmoil to some relative or loved one. Old wounds will be licked far too late and festering injuries will soon crop up in the relationships soon to be rekindled in this dramatic account of a down and out musician.
About the Pink Sky
I love cynically joyous and humorouspersonalities, and this particular Japanese drama delivers. Izumi is an independent high school girl who rates the newspapers with usually bad reviews. She happens upon a wallet containing 300, 000 yen (4,000 U.S. dollars) and gives the money to her financially troubled fishing buddy. Her friends force her to return the wallet to the owner Sato, a wealthy classmate. Instead of returning the money, Izumi is asked to help one of Sato's friends in the hospital by creating a newspaper with only good reviews. The sarcasm that I'm sure will be found throughout the piece is something I look forward to. Especially when situated in the beautiful country of Japan.
Dr Breakfast
I am not one to watch too many animated independent films. They remind me too much of video games, which without the tactile experience,feels like some poorly done Pixar film, but with such an interesting and surrealist plot, I will make an exception.Also, it is animated drawings, a nice little break form CGI. I like the flat nature of moving pictures and not the bulbous eye sore of some CGI short films. The plot: A man's soul bursts from his eye, leaving a soul-less deflated eyeball of a human to eat breakfast with his talking deer companions. The soul then goes on a gluttonous rampage, eating anything and everything.
For more info. check out Sundance's website. Also, watch some films online.
https://www.sundance.org/festival/
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) directed by Woody Allen is a quirky and heartwarming meditation on being a cinephile. Mia Farrow plays Cecelia, a struggling waitress who comes home to an apathetic and neanderthal for a husband, as if the Great Depression wasn't enough of a burden for her. Her only escape from her troublesome life is the cinema. The cinema then returns that love by releasing a fictional character, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), from the screen. This film is a great example of Hollywood's idealistic display of life. It shows the relationships we hold for the characters of a non-existent world that gives a sense of fulfillment even though the cinema is built on illusion.
Cecelia eventually becomes the focus of Tom's love and the two fall immediately for each other. Yet Gil Shepard (Jeff Daniels) comes to town to banish his shadow of a personality back to the screen from whence it came. The love Cecelia shows for Tom becomes the love she shows for Gil, skewering any sense the girl had for real love and illusions. The magic of Hollywood has become so ingrained in her mind that she is unable to tell real love apart from an illusion of love.
Cecelia feels fulfilled when she goes to the movies as does everyone else, yet when Tom's character exits the screen, Cecelia is satisfied while others demand their money back, because the illusion has been destroyed, or at least proven to be real. The audience is aware of the illusion that is the cinema, yet when it becomes truly real, they demand their money back. The fulfillment involved in the cinema is an acknowledgement of the absence of the real in the cinema. When the absence is effaced, the sense of fulfillment becomes denied and the illusion destroyed.
One of my favorite films if not my favorite. Fight Club is wild David Fincher ride, busting at the seems with testosterone and castration.In its purest form, it shows the fetishistic tendencies of men in their prime, dissatisfied with the commercialism that has essentially become their masculinity. They are the shadows of primordial alpha males. In order to regain what has been lost because of the media and commercialism, Tyler Durden and the gang make a Fight Club as a deconstructive way to start from the foundation of man and build back up to their ancestral perfection.
The path to deconstruction leads to a masochistic restructuring of one's projection of sexual desire on to material wealth. Instead, pain becomes a way to forget about the sexual dullness in the unfulfilled desires brought on by commercialism. Three major instances occur:
1) Tyler asks Jack to hit him as hard as he can.
2) The chemical burn scene.
3) The final scene (I won't go into detail here for fear of spoilers).
These instances are in a way fetishistic, in that the sexual desire to become full, or fulfilled, to find meaning for desire, etc. are very stimulating scenes in the movie visually (flashing montage), musically (Dust Brothers kicks in after silence), or through Fincher's masterful use of CGI.
When I say unfulfilled desire, I'm talking about the lack of actual sexual intercourse that isn't found in the sexual arousal caused by fetishes. The ideology of commercialism here is flipped on its head. Tyler in a way embodies it, and embraces it instead of striving for it. He wears fine clothes, sunglasses, and has the body of a model. Yet his ideology is the opposite of commercialism. He says never be satisfied, never be complete and let the chips fall where they may. Tyler doesn't attempt to fulfill that desire because he knows what a fruitless endeavor it is. Instead, Tyler takes the scraps from the materialistic society (like fat from liposuction clinics) and makes soap out of it to sell it back to the perfect, models of perfection in department stores. He is working through the underground to play with the idea of unfulfilled desire perepetuated by the commercial system.
Happy Holidays to all. This Winter Solstice there are plenty of family animated flicks out there, but my money is going to The Adventures of Tintin. I'd rather see this over War Horse, Spielberg's other release this Christmas. I'm not a huge fan of horse movies. I know, that's no excuse, but I just can't wrap my head around plots centered around relationships with horses.
Video games have come a long way since their pixelated predecessors. They've driven to emulate cinematic camerawork and acting through cut scenes and voice acting. In ways, they are very similar to films in looks, and are basically animated films, yet we experience them in completely different ways than film. The biggest physical difference between the two is the added sensation of touch to that of the video game. Films lack this tactile detail and therefore, films lack a physically engaging aspect. People involved in video games are challenged and this touch creates an ability to control what is going in the game through kinetic movements of the hands. Video games are all about a degree of control whereas films do not include this. They are under the control of the filmmaker and there is nothing given to the spectator. Film goers are only along for the ride, whereas gamers are very much participating in the direction of the protagonist in games. The greatest example of this would be the interactive drama Heavy Rain. The entire game is emblematic of cinema in the shots that compose the video game, yet the consequences of the game are totally under the influence of the gamer, and one person's experience may differ completely form another. Films are able to show exactly what narrative path to take and exactly what to look at and pay attention to through close-ups, camera movement, and characters. Video games can do this or hand over control to the gamer.
Video games are challenging and give physical and mental challenge to the players. Games can immerse a gamer in the reality of the protagonist in ways that films can't and also produce eclectic reactions that are caused by the tension in the game. The can cause mental stress that films can not. Frustration and denial of closure is another aspect included in video games. Since games can be paused and come back to later, closure can be delayed. Closure is also denied completely if certain aspects of the game are not completed. In Mass Effect 2, closure surrounding certain characters is denied completely if concern for their individual dilemmas are lacking. The spectator has control over whether these events may play out or not. This causes the video game to have a certain dialog between the makers of the game and the player, a dialog concerning what parts need to be shown and how each person's individual experience may differ. This variety of experiences give video games numerous outcomes and interpretations, so much so that two individuals may not even be experiencing the same game. Films allow for the view of another dimension, that of reality, objectified in all its wonder, whereas video games allow for an objectified view of challenge and experience, therefore posing certain decisions to be made by the spectator. It allows for reflection during the game rather than reflection afterward as in movies where there is no pausing, only experiencing.
Teresa De Lauretis has made several meaningful contributions to the studies of narrative with psychoanalytic focus on how spectators perceive narrative in film. He theories on desire and its movement of identification throughout films has allowed for a certain masking to take place when viewing films. Men and women take on these different masks when interpreting and identifying with certain aspects of the narrative in films. With this in mind I like to say something on a very unique film La Pointe Courte, directed by Agnes Varda.
De Lauretis points out that women identify both with the active agent in the film and that of the passive agent. The active agent being the male protagonist off to" rescue the princess" and the passive agent being the princess or the setting or landscape through which the male agent travels. In the film the passivity of the land is that of the male's hometown and the agent traveling across this is both the women and the male. Since the whole premise of the film is based on the couple revealing the state of their relationship, the setting serves as a template for this journey to take place on. The female perception is taken somewhat while the male passivity is explored, since in this case the female agent is the one on "foreign soil", an unfamiliar land that is now a part of both of their lives.
I believe the state of their relationship is that of a strong bond like the one that the male holds with his hometown. The landscape is a metaphor for their relationship, stale, polluted, lackluster and full of predictability. It is inescapable and the woman now has to accept it if she wants the relationship to continue. Certain shots and editing call attention to this bond. For instance, their is a profiling of the two main character's faces in one of the film's most memorable shots with the male facing the camera while half of his face is completed with part of the women's face in a profile. This hermaphroditic visual shows the bond of the relationship in a single frame and part of a single being or countenance. This shot happens twice with the positions of the faces being switched and it shows a being much like that of the state of the two characters' relationship. They have become bonded, much like the man and his hometown, and they have evolved into something much more than a couple enchanted by the passion of their love. They have become inseparable.
The land through which the active agent travels is a landscape shared by the two characters. It is the landscape of their bond that they've formed since they were together. It is the exploration of this land that brings on the closure at the end of the tale, which De Lauretis claims in the usual narrative is the point where the female identifies with the object of desire the "princess". This film's closure comes from a realization of a bond, one that is strong, but not as full of life as it had been in the throngs of passion. Therefore, the "rescuing of the princess" becomes less of a symbol of the triumph of the male gaze, and more so a repositioning of that gaze to one that may pertain to both sexes.
